This anthology brings together many of the more significant contributions to Cartesian scholarship, some of which reach far back as the 1930s. Altogether, there are well over 100 detailed analyses and discussions of salient aspects of Descartes' Promethean legacy. Because Descartes intended his system to embrace not only philosophy but also a complete scientific corpus, this collection covers both philosophical issues and scientific views: Volume 1 is devoted to questions of Cartesian Method and epistemology; Volumes 2 and 3 concentrate on (...) his metaphysics; and Volume 4 discusses Descartes' scientific views and achievements. The lucidity and originality of the essays, a number of which are already classics of Cartesian scholarship, will ensure that this anthology becomes a standard in Cartesian philosophy. An invaluable resource, Rene;e Descartes provides a large variety of introductions, analyses, criticisms, and appraisals of the problems which preoccupied Descartes and the solutions he propounded. (shrink)

A major contribution to Descartes studies, this book provides a panorama of cutting-edge scholarship ranging widely over Descartes's own primary concerns: metaphysics, physics, and its applications. It is at once a tool for scholars and--steering clear of technical Cartesian science--an accessible resource that will delight nonspecialists. The contributors include Edwin Curley, Willis Doney, Alan Gabbey, Daniel Garber, Marjorie Grene, Gary Hatfield, Marleen Rozemond, John Schuster, Dennis Sepper, Stephen Voss, Stephen Wagner, Margaret Welson, Jean Marie Beyssade, Michelle Beyssade, Michel Henry, Evert (...) van Leeuwen, Jean-Luc Marion, Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, and Jean-Pierre Seris. Combining new textual sensitivity with attentiveness to history, they represent the best established scholars and most exciting new voices, including both English speaking and newly-translated writers. Part I examines the foundations of Descartes's philosophy: Cartesian certainty; the phenomenology of the cogito and its modulations in the passions; and the defensibility and comprehensibility of the Cartesian God. The second part examines Descartes's groundbreaking metaphysics: mind's distinctness from and interaction with body; imagination; perception; and language. Part III examines Cartesian science: the revolutionary rhetoric of the Rules and the Discourse; the metaphysical foundations of physics; the interplay of rationalism and empiricism; the mechanics and human biology that flow from Descartes's physics. (shrink)

When originally published in 1952, this book filled a gap in the history of philosophy and science and remains an important work today, because it puts the main mathematical and physical discoveries of Descartes in an accessible form, for the benefit of English readers. Descartes is acknowledged to be the founder of modern mathematics, through his invention of analytical geometry and this volume charts Descartes’ role in bringing a unity into algebra and geometry and the development of mathematics into a (...) discipline which could be properly analysed. Carefully paraphrasing the Géométrie, this volume retains much of Descartes’ original notation as well as the original diagrams. The volume also discusses the considerable contribution that Descartes made to the physical sciences which involved accurate work in optics, light, sight and colour. (shrink)

An introduction to Descartes as a philosopher. Situates his philosophy within the context of Descartes' efforts to forge a new natural philosophy, including original work on the theory of the senses and the passions and emotions.

Why is it so important to study Nietzsche? Many works about Nietzsche’s thought have been published over the years, from every conceivable position, including analytical philosophy.1 One more essay on Nietzsche may seem a bit repetitive. Yet, as Giuseppe Fornari wrote in the preface of Il Caso Nietzsche (The Nietzsche Case), it is fundamental to analyze Nietzsche deeply, because the most important themes of his works are still hidden among the pages of his books.2 René Girard has made an original (...) contribution to understanding Nietzsche by underlining the close connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the personal relationships he established during his life. In particular, Girard’s .. (shrink)

This essay contends that René Girard is not a philosopher or a scientist whose ideas are open to theological appropriation. Instead, contrary to his assertions otherwise, the Girard corpus ought to be read as if it were articulating a form of theology whose primary intellectual home can ultimately be found on a theological map. As the field of Girardian theology grows, it becomes more evident that we need some theological lenses for examining the theology already lying waiting—sometimes inchoately, sometimes not—in (...) Girard's texts, and also for examining how theologians use and misuse his texts. If we can see that he is already doing theology then a theological critique becomes plausible and valid in principle, and indeed becomes an internal critique. Applying good interpretive lenses will provide some rigorous criteria for analyzing the degree to which Girardian theologians are following the internal logic of Girard's thought in their appropriations of it. The interpretive lenses I propose using on Girard are first the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and then the theology of John Cassian . These two theologians provide us with lenses that help us see that Girard is fundamentally a Catholic theologian involved in resisting the speculative re‐writing of Christianity by proponents of “false gnosis” and that he belongs within the category of theologians who advocate spiritual transformation and “true gnosis.”. (shrink)

Even though the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes has been remembered primarily for his contributions to Western philosophy, he also showed a curiosity about many aspects of the natural world. His mechanistic and rationalistic methods have been criticized as often as they have been praised, but they provided a framework for subsequent scientific inquiry.

Religion has become a vital resource for attempts to rethink the meaning of the political. This article rehearses the efforts of two recent figures, René Girard and Giorgio Agamben, to transform the political by renewing its connection to religion. Both thinkers struggle to escape politics as defined by Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. Girard and Agamben do clash ideologically, but their inquiries into sacrifice and messianism take similar courses. Regarding origins, Girard argues for the sacrificial crisis as the common parent to (...) religion and politics. Conversely, for Agamben, the Roman figure of homo sacer distinguishes politics from religion. With respect to the future, Girard's messianism installs Christian belief as the only way to move beyond violence. By contrast, Agamben steers Pauline messianism toward the efforts to displace sovereignty and reopen the political. I conclude that Agamben breaks with Schmitt while Girard reinscribes his politics at a higher level. Key Words: Giorgio Agamben  Rey Chow  Christianity  René Girard  homo sacer  messianism  politics  sacred  sacrifice  Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

The major goal of René Descartes’s rich and penetrating recent book, Meditations on First Philosophy, is to develop a methodology for the discovery of the truth, more specifically, a methodology that accommodates the dictates of a mathematical physics for our view of physical reality. Such a methodology must accordingly deal with and seek to defuse the apparent conflict between a mathematical physics and our commonsense picture of things, a conflict that continues to pose difficult challenges. Though much in the book (...) is devoted to an account of the mind, that focus results from the broader goal of finding a methodology for discovery that will deliver an overall picture of reality consonant with a mathematical physics. Much that Descartes says in this book may strike many readers as extravagant and implausible, and perhaps hardly worth serious consideration. But there is a line of argument one can extract that is challenging and often compelling, even if not in the end wholly convincin .. (shrink)

Treatments of the moral doctrine of René Descartes found in the Cartesian scholarship do not typically regard the Cartesian philosophy as being devoted to moral instruction. In this essay, it is argued that the moral philosophy of Descartes involves the connection of the method enunciated in the Discourse on the Method with the „morale par provision” articulated in that work. The affinity between morals and method is found in the fact that moral dispositions are to be adapted to the progress (...) achieved in scientific technology. Accordingly, it is the advance of science that determines the good of man. And it is concluded that the Cartesian moral teaching amounts to this: That which man can do is good or moral to do. (shrink)

In the year 2002, I came across a manuscript by Jean-Pierre Dupuy that linked the work of Ivan Illich with that of René Girard. I immediately set about translating the text, which was published in Spanish as part of the essay collection The Other Titan: Ivan Illich.1 The original “Detour and Sacrifice” can be found in two books that pay tribute to the authors. The first was compiled by Lee Hoinacki and Carl Mitcham, Illich’s disciples;2 the second is a book (...) edited by Sandor Goodhart, Jorgen Jorgensen, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams that celebrates Girard’s work.3The genesis of Dupuy’s text actually goes back to 1996 and was inspired by Ivan Illich’s seventieth birthday, which was celebrated with a series of... (shrink)

This article attempts to respond to the fractional presence of feminist discourse around René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. I will first briefly examine the relevant critical stands on mimesis and then proceed to rehabilitate it for feminism via an analysis of Judith Butler’s theory of performative gender. By bringing together selected aspects of Girard and Butler’s work, it will be possible to build a constructive dialogue between the two thinkers. Due to the scope of the paper I will not (...) be able to give an exhaustive account of the respective theories, and hence I will discuss only the most relevant aspects. Girard is concerned with giving an account of conflictual mimetic desire in social and cultural.. (shrink)

Though the work of René Girard has highlighted the interrelations between sacrifice and sacrality in the contemporary world, it has yet to engage the work of Walter Benjamin and his heir, Giorgio Agamben, whose project concerning the Homo Sacer has aroused interest in contemporary political thought. By focusing on Benjamin's early description of mimesis and its relation to language, a position can be elaborated that steers mimesis clear of its indebtedness to language and towards a ‘purer’ realm of gesture. Benjamin's (...) formulation of a more proper ‘divine’ language of gestures could then be said to coalesce with certain historical-religious proclamations, something that Agamben's work challenges us to consider as a viable, albeit ‘profane’, political and ethical option for humanity. (shrink)

Religion in the perverted form of idolatry/ideology is at the root of violence for Simone Weil and René Girard. For Girard, “mimetic desire” expresses the idolization of another and ultimately of the self: when the individual’s expectations of achieving autonomy through another remain unfulfilled, he seeksa scapegoat. For Weil, everyone is subject to “force” as recipient or perpetrator of violence which is catalyzed by ideology, a form of idolatry. While Weil focuseson the idolatry of ideas, both writers agree that the (...) subject’s desire for absolute autonomy is the source of idolatry and violence. Furthermore, both presupposesuffering as the individual’s driving force, seeking relief in idols or scapegoats; accepting this suffering by imitating Christ is the solution, freeing one from selfish,idolatrous desires. (shrink)

In a letter to Raymund Schwager from October 1991, René Girard arrived at a very critical verdict concerning his 1978 book Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World—the very book about which he had written almost one and a half decades before, that it contained the “essence of what I have to say” and “clarified and dissipated former misunderstandings.”1 The reason for this change of mind was Raymund Schwager himself, who had sent him the manuscript of a paper on (...) “Mimesis and Freedom” he had presented seven years earlier, in 1984, at a symposium on Girard’s thinking in Provo, Utah.2 For Girard, who had actually attended the Provo symposium, this text as such was, naturally, not new. And it was not new for him .. (shrink)

Karin Peter and Nikolaus Wandinger, James G. Williams, and Mathias Moosbrugger give in their essays in this volume of Contagion some basic information about the correspondence between these two “beautiful minds”: René Girard and Raymund Schwager. I would now like to go “step-by-step” along the way of some selected letters, and this only insofar as they discussed the question of sacrifice.1 Going this way the reader can get an idea how these two men were dealing with each other. These excerpts (...) show on the one hand the dynamic of their correspondence, on the other hand the different positions of the partners. Girard is not a theologian, so he shows uncertainty with regard to theological questions. Schwager is firmly .. (shrink)